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When documentarians the directors and his co-director visited Easterling prison in the year 2019, they witnessed a misleadingly cheerful atmosphere. Similar to other Alabama correctional institutions, Easterling largely prohibits journalistic access, but permitted the crew to record its yearly volunteer-run barbecue. On camera, incarcerated individuals, mostly African American, danced and smiled to live music and sermons. However behind the scenes, a different narrative surfaced—terrifying beatings, hidden stabbings, and indescribable violence swept under the rug. Pleas for assistance came from sweltering, dirty dorms. When Jarecki approached the voices, a prison official halted filming, stating it was dangerous to interact with the men without a security chaperone.

“It was obvious that certain sections of the prison that we were not allowed to view,” Jarecki recalled. “They use the excuse that it’s all about security and safety, because they aim to prevent you from comprehending what is occurring. These prisons are similar to secret locations.”

A Stunning Documentary Uncovering Years of Neglect

That interrupted cookout event opens The Alabama Solution, a powerful new documentary made over six years. Collaboratively directed by the director and Kaufman, the two-hour production exposes a gallingly broken institution rife with unchecked abuse, compulsory work, and extreme brutality. It documents prisoners’ tremendous efforts, under ongoing danger, to change situations deemed “illegal” by the federal authorities in 2020.

Covert Recordings Uncover Horrific Realities

Following their suddenly ended prison tour, the directors connected with men inside the state prison system. Guided by veteran organizers Melvin Ray and Robert Earl Council, a group of sources supplied multiple years of evidence filmed on contraband cell phones. The footage is disturbing:

• Vermin-ridden cells
• Piles of human waste
• Spoiled food and blood-stained surfaces
• Regular officer beatings
• Inmates removed out in remains pouches
• Corridors of men unresponsive on substances sold by staff

Council begins the film in five years of solitary confinement as retribution for his organizing; later in filming, he is nearly killed by guards and loses sight in one eye.

A Story of Steven Davis: Violence and Secrecy

Such violence is, the film shows, standard within the ADOC. As incarcerated sources persisted to gather proof, the filmmakers looked into the killing of an inmate, who was beaten unrecognizably by guards inside the Donaldson prison in 2019. The Alabama Solution traces Davis’s parent, Sandy Ray, as she seeks truth from a uncooperative ADOC. She discovers the official version—that her son menaced officers with a weapon—on the news. However several imprisoned observers informed the family's attorney that the inmate held only a toy knife and yielded at once, only to be beaten by multiple officers anyway.

A guard, Roderick Gadson, smashed the inmate's skull off the hard surface “like a basketball.”

Following three years of evasion, the mother spoke with Alabama’s “tough on crime” attorney general a state official, who informed her that the state would decline to file criminal counts. Gadson, who faced numerous individual lawsuits alleging excessive force, was given a higher rank. The state covered for his defense costs, as well as those of every guard—a portion of the $51m used by the government in the last half-decade to protect staff from wrongdoing claims.

Compulsory Labor: The Modern-Day Slavery System

The state profits financially from ongoing mass incarceration without oversight. The Alabama Solution describes the alarming extent and hypocrisy of the ADOC’s labor program, a forced-labor system that essentially functions as a modern-day mutation of historical bondage. This program provides $450m in products and services to the state each year for virtually no pay.

In the program, imprisoned workers, mostly African American residents deemed unsuitable for society, earn $2 a day—the same daily wage rate established by the state for imprisoned workers in the year 1927, at the height of Jim Crow. They work more than 12 hours for private companies or government locations including the government building, the executive residence, the judicial branch, and municipal offices.

“Authorities allow me to work in the public, but they don’t trust me to give me parole to get out and return to my loved ones.”

Such workers are statistically less likely to be paroled than those who are not, even those considered a higher public safety risk. “That gives you an idea of how important this low-cost labor is to Alabama, and how important it is for them to maintain people locked up,” stated the director.

Prison-wide Strike and Continued Struggle

The documentary concludes in an incredible feat of activism: a state-wide inmates' strike calling for better treatment in October 2022, organized by Council and his co-organizer. Illegal cell phone video reveals how ADOC ended the protest in less than two weeks by starving inmates en masse, assaulting Council, sending soldiers to threaten and beat others, and cutting off contact from strike leaders.

The National Issue Outside One State

The protest may have failed, but the message was clear, and outside the state of Alabama. Council concludes the film with a call to action: “The abuses that are taking place in this state are happening in every region and in the public's behalf.”

From the reported abuses at New York’s Rikers Island, to California’s use of 1,100 incarcerated firefighters to the frontlines of the LA wildfires for less than minimum wage, “one observes similar things in most states in the country,” noted Jarecki.

“This is not only Alabama,” said the co-director. “We’re witnessing a new wave of ‘law-and-order’ policy and language, and a retributive strategy to {everything